Techno Logik®

SOCIAL NETWORKING

What is Social Networking?

Social Networking is also referred to as Web 2.0. It is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as:

• social-networking sites (allowing interaction amongst users)
   
  
• wikis (software that allows registered users or anyone to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material)
   
  
• blogs (allowing readers to post their comments on the topics discussed)
   
  
• folksonomies - also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging (the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.)

Although the term Web 2.0 suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web.

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the World Wide Web in March 1989 with the help of Belgian, Robert Cailliau, and a young student staff at CERN in Switzerland) have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have existed since the early days of the Web.

So, would you like us to put that a little more simply?

Web 2.0 is the trend towards “interactive” web sites like ‘Facebook’ and ‘MySpace’ where users interact with each other and are enabled to place content on the site.

That’s it! Twenty lines of waffle reduced to two!

But maybe it explains why we put Web2.0 and blogging together in one activity. If you think about it, the only way that most of us can control a web space that is able to invite interaction from other users is to start a blog. Reinventing MySpace or Facebook is probably a bit beyond even our capabilities!

And in case you are really new to the Web, a blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is defined as a website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

"Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. (I blog, you blog, he blogs, we all blog together. Etc!)

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual and are part of a wider network of social media.

Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs!.

Why start with a blog?

The reason that blogs should be one of the first marketing tools you reach for is because search engines love them! They love them because they almost always represent new, unique content (which is what search engines thrive on). As far as search engines are concerned, comparing a blog to a static web site is rather like comparing a six-shooter to a water pistol. And that’s why, more and more, people are monetizing blogs and using them to take people to their static sites.

A few people have strong feelings that blogs should remain ‘personal diaries’ and that monetizing them is evil, immoral, unethical, greedy, obnoxious, anti-social blah blah blah. If you feel that way, move on to the next chapter, do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect any money!

And here’s another sad fact if you think that blogging is something you can do in your spare time with no effort. You need to be web savvy!

You don’t need to be a programmer, but you do need a decent functional understanding of certain web technologies. The following elements are significant:

• blog publishing software
• HTML/CSS
• blog comments (and comment spam)
• RSS/syndication
• feed aggregators
• pings
• trackbacks
• blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• page rank
• social bookmarking
• tagging
• contextual advertising
• affiliate programs

If that list makes your head spin, we wouldn’t recommend that you try to earn a full-time living from blogging just yet! However, with our help, you can still create and benefit from a blog. But even if you hire us to handle the routines and implementation, it’s important that you know what you’re getting into. After all, even a backroom General knows what a rifle is!

The rapid rate of change in web technologies can confuse even ancient veterans, so we fully understand how nerve-racking it can be for anyone who’s relatively new to the Web. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now we learn about some ‘fascinating’ new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road.

Making sense of them can be a pain in the butt, And even though confusion can be uncomfortable, new technologies are what creates the springboard for relative newcomers to earn vast sums online within just a few months of starting up. All it takes is one clever idea and the determination to see it through to a conclusion.

With our help, you can master Web 2.0 and Social Networking to your advantage.